/ 4 
PAM. eras 


— 


isc. vY\ ARS Cx te. woh eu As J 


American Board of Commissioners for 
Foreign Missions. 


HEATHEN CLAIMS 


AND 


CHRISTIAN DUTY. 


BY 


MRS. ISABELLA BIRD BISHOP, F.R.GS., 


And Honorary Fellow of the Royal Scottish Geographical 
Society. 


BOSTON: 
Printed for the American Woard; 
CoNGREGATIONAL Housg, 
BEACON STREET. 


1908. 


oo 


The following Address of Mrs. Bish- 
op, the well-known traveler and author, 
was given before the Gleaner’s Union, 
an organization connected with: the 
Church Missionary Society, in Exeter 
Hall, London, November 1, 1893, and is 
reprinted by permission. 


HEATHEN CLAIMS AND CHRISTIAN DUTY. 


It is not as a mission worker in even the 
humblest department of mission work that 
I have been asked to speak tonight, but as 
a traveler, and as one who has been made a 
convert to missions, not by missionary suc- 
cesses, but by seeing in four and a half years 
of Asiatic traveling the desperate needs of 
the "nchristianized world. There was a time 
when J was altogether indifferent to missions, 
and would have avoided a mission station 
rather than have visited it. But the awful, 
pressing claims of the unchristianized nations 
which I have seen have taught me that the 
work of their conversion to Christ is one to: 
which one would gladly give influence and. 
whatever else God has given to one, 

In the few words that I shall address to yow 
tonight I should like (for I cannot tell you any- 
thing new or anything that you do not already 
know) just to pass on some of the ideas which 
have suggested themselves to my own mind in 
my long and solitary travels, and perhaps es 


4 ~ 


pecially since I came home, full of the needs 
of the heathen world, and to some extent 
amazed at the apathy and callousness of the 
Christian Church at home. I have visited the 
Polynesian Islands, Japan, Southern China, the 
Malay Peninsula, Ceylon, Northern India, Cashe 
mere, Western Thibet, and Central Asia, Per- 
sia, Arabia, and Asia Minor. In each of these 
countries I have avoided, as much as possible, 
European settlements, and have scarcely lin- 
gered so long as I could have wished at mis- 
sion stations. My object was to live among 
the people, and I have lived much in their own 
houses and among their tents, always with a 
trustworthy interpreter, sharing their lives as 
much as possible, and to some extent winning 
their confidence by means of a medicine chest 
which I carried. Wherever I have been I have 
seen sin and sorrow and shame. I cannot tell 
of fields whitening unto the harvest, nor have 
I heard the songs of rejoicing laborers bring: 
ing the sheaves home. But I have seen work 
done, the seed sown in tears by laborers sent 
out by you— honest work, work which has made 
me more and more earnestly desire to help the 
cause of missions from a personal knowledge 
of work in the mission field —but not among 
the lower races, or the fetich worshipers, or 
among the simpler systems which destroy men’s 
souls. The reason, perhaps, why I have seen 


5 


so little missionary success is because the 
countries in which I have traveled are the 
regions of great, elaborate, philosophical reli- 
gious systems, such as Buddhism, Hinduism, 
and Mohammedanism. 

Naturally, among those at home there is a 
disposition to look at the work done. On my 
own part there may be too great a disposition, 
possibly, to look at the work left undone, bee 
cause to me it seems so vast and so appalling, 
The enthusiasm of Exeter Hall has in it some 
thing that to many is delightful and contagious. 
We sing hopeful, triumphant hymns, we hear 
of what the Lord has done, of encouragements 
which a merciful God gives to inadequate and 
feeble efforts, and some of us, perhaps, think 
that little remains to be accomplished, and that 
the kingdoms of this world are about to be 
come “the kingdoms of our God and of his 
Christ.” But such is not the case; and I think 
that we may, instead of congratulating oure 
selves upon the work done, though we are 
thankful for what God has enabled us to do, 
bow our heads in shame that we have done so 
little and served so little. And I would like 
tonight that we should turn away from these 
enchantments, for enchantments they truly are, 
and set our faces towards the wilderness, that 
great, “waste, howling wilderness,” in which 
one thousand millions of our race are wander: 


6 


ing in darkness and the shadow of death, with. 
out hope, being “without God in the world.” 

The work is only beginning, and we have 
barely touched the fringe of it. The natural 
increase of population in the heathen world is 
outstripping at this moment all our efforts; 
and if it is true, and I believe it has never been 
contradicted, that four millions only have been 
baptized within this century, it has been also 
said without contradiction that the natural in- 
crease of the heathen world in that time has 
been two hundred millions —an awful contem- 
plation for us tonight. It is said that there are 
eight hundred millions on our earth to whom 
the name of Jesus Christ is unknown, and that 
ten hundred and thirty millions are not in any 
sense. Christianized. Of these, thirty-five mil- 
lions pass annually in one ghastly, reproachful, 
mournful procession into Christless graves. 
They are dying so very fast! In China alone, 
taking the lowest computation of the popula- 
tion which has been given, it is estimated that 
fourteen hundred die every hour, and that in 
this one day thirty-three thousand Chinese have 
passed beyond our reach. And if this meeting 
were to agree to send a missionary tomorrow 
to China, before he could reach Chinese shores 
one and a half millions of souls would have 
passed from this world into eternity. Nineteen 
centuries have passed away, and only one third 


7 


of the population of our earth is even nominally 
Christian. 

We are bound to face these facts and all 
that they mean for us tonight, and to ask our- 
selves how we stand in regard to this awful 
need of the heathen world. We have in this 
country ' 43,000 ordained ministers. If we were 
to be treated as we treat the heathen, we should 
have but 220 workers for the United Kingdom, 
of which number seventy would be women. In 
China alone we have but one missionary for half 
a million of people, as if we were to have one 
minister for Glasgow, or Birmingham, or Man- 
chester, or one of our large cities. I think we 
may say that to us indeed belongeth shame for 
this our neglect. The Moravians, as perhaps 
most here know, have one missionary out of 
every sixty of their members. We have but 
one out of every 5,000 of our members. Theirs 
is an example that we can follow. Were we 
equally impressed with love and obedience, 
we should have 200,000 missionaries, and our 
contributions would be £20,000,000 a year. 
What an object this is to arouse the sleeping 
conscience with! We spend £140,000,000, or 
three guineas a head, upon drink; we smoke 
£,16,000,000, and we hoard £240,000,0003; while 
our whole contributions for the conversion of 


1 Grezt Britain. 


8 


this miserable world are but one and a half 
million pounds, or ninepence a head. These 
statistics are dry enough, but they are filled 
with meaning, and an awful meaning if we 
would only dwell upon them, each one of us 
tonight in our own heart in the sight of God. 

I think that we are getting into a sort of 
milk-and-water view of heathenism — not of Afri- 
can heathenism alone, but of Buddhism, Hindu- 
ism, and Mohammedanism also, which prevail 
in Asia. Missionaries come home, and they 
refrain from shocking audiences by recitals of 
the awful sins of the heathen and Moslem 
world. When traveling in Asia, it struck me 
very much how little we heard, how little we 
know, as to how sin is enthroned and deified 
and worshiped. There is sin and shame every- 
where. Mohammedanism js corrupt to the .- 
very core. The morals of Mohammedan coun- 
tries, perhaps in Persia in particular, are cor- 
rupt, and the imaginations very wicked. How 
corrupt Buddhism is! How corrupt Buddhists 
are! It is an astonishment to find that there 
is scarcely a single thing that makes for right- 
eousness in the life of the unchristianized na- 
tions. There is no public opinion interpene- 
trated by Christianity which condemns sin or 
wrong. There is nothing except the conscience 
of some few who are seeking after God “fest 
haply they might feel after him who is not 


9 


far from every one of us.” And over ail this 
seething mass of sin and shame and corrup- 
tion hovers “the ruler of the darkness of this 
world,” rejoicing in the chains with which he 
has bound two thirds of the human race. 

Just one or two remarks as to what these 
false faiths do. They degrade women with an 
infinite degradation. I have lived in zenanas 
and harems, and have seen the daily life of the 
secluded women, and I can speak from bitter 
experience of what their lives are —the intel- 
lect dwarfed, so that the woman of.twenty or 
thirty years of age is more like a child of eight 
intellectually; while all the worst passions of 
human nature are stimulated and developed in 
a fearful degree—jealousy, envy, murderous 
hate, intrigue, running to such an extent that 
in some countries I have hardly ever been in 
a women’s house or near a women’s tent with- 
out being asked for drugs with which to dis- 
figure the favorite wife, to take away her life, 
or to take away the life of the favorite wife’s 
infant son. This request has been made of me 
nearly two hundred times. This is only an in- 
dication of the daily life of whose miseries we, 
think so little, and which is a natural product 
of the systems that we ought to have subverted 
long ago. 

It follows necessarily that there is also an 
infinite degradation of men. The whole ’conti- 


) fe) 


ment of Asiais corrupt. It is the scene of bar 
barities, tortures, brutal punishments, oppres- 
sion, official corruption, which is worst under 
Mohammedan rule — of all things which are the 
natural products of systems which are without 
God in Christ. There are no sanctities of 
home, nothing to tell of righteousness, tem- 
perance, or judgment to come; only a fearful 
looking for in the future of fiery indignation 
from some quarter, they know not what, a 
dread of everlasting rebirths into forms of ob- 
noxious reptiles or insects, or of tortures which 
are infinite, and which are depicted in pic- 
tures of fiendish ingenuity. 

And then one comes to what sickness is to 
them. If one speaks of the sins, one is bound 
to speak of the sorrows too. The sorrows of 
heathenism impressed me — sorrows which hu- | 
manitarianism, as well as Christianity, should 
Jead us to roll away. Sickness means to us 
tenderness all about us, the hushed footfall in 
the house, everything sacrificed for the sick 
person, no worry or evil allowed to enter into 
the sick room, kindness of neighbors who, 
maybe, have been strangers to us, the skill of 
doctors ready to alleviate every symptom —all 
these are about our sick beds, together with 
loving relations and skilled nurses; and if any 
of us are too poor to be nursed at home, there 
are magnificent hospitals where everything that 


If 


skill and money can do is provided for the 
poorest among us. And, besides, there are the 
Christian ministries of friends and ministers, 
the reading of the Word of God, the repetition 
of hymns full of hope—all that can make a 
sick bed a time of peace and blessing enters 
our own sick room, and even where the sufferer 
has been impenitent, He “who is able to save 
to the very uttermost” stands by the sick bed 
ready even in the dying hour to cleanse and re- 
ceive the parting soul. In the case of the 
Christian the crossing of the river is a time of 
triumph and of hope, and “O death, where is 
thy sting? O grave, where is thy victory?” 
sounds over his dying bed. 

But what does sickness mean to millions 
of our fellow creatures in heathen lands? 
Throughout the East sickness is believed to 
be the work of demons. The sick person at 
once becomes an object of loathing and terror, 
is put out of the house, is taken to an out- 
house, is poorly fed and rarely visited, or the 
astrologers, or priests, or medicine men, or wiz- 
ards assemble, beating big drums and gongs, 
blowing horns, and making the most fearful 
noises. They light gigantic fires and dance 
round them with their unholy incantations. 
They beat the sick person with clubs to drive 
out the demon. They lay him before a roast- 
ing fire till his skin is blistered, and then throw 


12 


him into cold water. They stuff the nostrils of 
the dying with aromatic mixtures or mud, and 
in some regions they carry the chronic sufferer 
to a mountain top, placing barley balls and 
water beside him, and leave him to die alone. 
If there were time I could tell you things that 
would make it scarcely possible for any one 
beginning life without a fixed purpose to avoid 
going into training as a medical missionary. 
The woe and sickness in the unchristianized 
world are beyond telling, and J would ask my 
sisters here to remember that these woes press 
most heavily upon women, who, in the seclu 
sion of their homes, are exposed to nameless 
barbarities in the hour of “the great pain and 
peril of childbirth,” and often perish miserably 
from barbarous maltreatment. 

This is only a glimpse of the sorrows of the 
heathen world. May we seek to realize in our 
own days of sickness and the days of sickness 
of those dear to us what illness means for 
those millions who are without God in the 
world, and go from this meeting resolved, cost 
what it may, to save them from these woes, and 
to carry the knowledge of Christ into these 
miserable homes! What added effort can we 
make? The duty of all Christians towards 
missions has been summed up in these words, 
“Go. Let go. Help go.” The need for men 
and women is vast, and I see many young mer. 


13 


and young women here who perhaps have not 
yet decided upon their life work. Then go! 
Young Christian friends, here is the noblest 
opening for you that the world presents. A life 
consecrated in foreign lands to the service of 
the Master is, 1 believe, one of the happiest 
lives that men or women live upon this earth. 
It may be that advancement in the professions 
at home may be sacrificed by going to the for- 
eign field; but in the hour when the soldier 
lays his dinted armor down, after the fight has 
been fought, and the hands which were pierced 
for our redemption crown his brow with the 
crown of life, and the prize of the high calling 
- of God is won, will there be one moment’s 
regret, think you, for the abandoned prizes of 
the professions at home? “Let go.” Help 
others to go by rejoicing in their going, by 
giving them willingly. 

Then comes the other great question of 
“Help go,” and this subject of increased self- 
sacrifice has occupied my thoughts very much 
indeed within the last few months. Our re- 
sponsibilities are increased by our knowledge. 
We pray God to give the means to send forth 
laborers. Has he not giveh us the means? 
Have we not the means to send forth mission- 
aries; have not our friends the means? And 
when we pray God to give the means, may we 
not rather pray him to consume the selfish- 


14 


ness which expends our means upon ourselves* 
Dare we, can we, sing such hymns as 


All the vain things that charm me most 
I sacrifice them to His blood, 


and yet surround ourselves with these “vain 
things””—the lust of the eyes and the vain- 
glory of life? Our style of living is always 
rising. Weare always accumulating. We fill 
our houses with pleasant things. We decorate 
our lives till further decoration seems almost 
impossible. Our expenditure on ourselves is 
enormous; and when I returned from Asia 
two years ago I thought that the expenditure 
on the decoration of life among Christian peo- 
ple had largely risen, and I think so still, and 
think so increasingly. Now, we have many 
possessions. We have old silver, we have 
jewelry, objects of art, rare editions of books, 
things that have been given to us by those we 
have loved, and which have most sacred asso- 
ciations. All these would bring their money 
value if they were sold. May we not hear the 
Lord’s voice saying to us in regard to these 
our treasured accumulations, “* Lovest thou me 
more than these?” It is time that we should 
readjust our expenditure in the light of our 
increased knowledge; and not in the light of 
our increased knowledge alone, but that we 
should go carefully over our stewardship at 


15 


the foot of the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, 
in the light of those eyes which closed in 
death for our redemption. 

The time is almost at an end, and yet there 
are one or two things I should like to say. 
There can be no arbitrary law about giving. 
If we readjusted, by our increased knowledge, 
personal needs and Christ’s needs at the foot 
of the cross, each one of us here tonight would 
be sure, I think I may say, to do the right 
thing. Let us be honest in our self-denial, and 
not think that we are carrying the burdens of 
this great, perishing, heathen world by touch- 
ing them lightly with our fingers, but let us 
bear them till they eat into the shrinking flesh, 
and so let us fulfill the law of Christ. Let us 
entreat him, even with strong crying and tears, 
to have mercy, not only on the Christless 
heathen, but on the Christlessness within our 
own hearts, on our shallow sympathies, and 
hollow self-denials, and on our infinite callous- 
ness to the woes of this perishing world, which 
God so loved that he gave his only Son for 
its redemption. 

In conclusion, let me say that the clock 
which marks so inexorably the time allotted 
to each speaker marks equally inexorably the 
passing away of life. Since I began to speak 
—and it isa most awful consideration — 2,500 
human beings, at the lowest computation, have 


16 


passed before the bar of God. And though 
the veil of the invisible is thick, and our ears 
are dull of hearing, can we not hear a voice 
saying to each of us, ‘“ What hast thou done? 
The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth unto 
me from the ground.” Every minute eighty- 
three of our Christless brethren and sisters are 
passing into eternity. 

The fields are white unto harvest, but who 
is to be the reaper? Is it to be the Lord of 
the harvest, or him who has been sowing tares 
ever since the world began? Let each of us 
do our utmost by any amount of self-sacrifice 
to see that it shall be the Lord of the harvest. 
And may the constraining memories of the 
cross of Christ, and that great love wherewith 
he loved us, be so in us that we may pass that 
love on to those who are perishing. ‘* We 
know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that 
though he was rich, yet for our sakes he be- 
came poor,” and we hear his voice tonight 
ringing down through ages of selfishness and 
luxury and neglected duty, solemnly declaring 
that the measure of our love for our brethren 
must be nothing less than the measure of his 
own. May he touch all our hearts with the 
spirit of self-sacrifice and with the inspiration 
of that love of his which, when he came io 
redeem the world, KEPT NOTHING BACK! 


